THE "OTHER" AS A COMIC FIGURE / האחר כדמות קומית

In the Hebrew culture that came into being in Israel, alongside the independent images of the "pioneer" and the "tsabar" (native-born Israeli), there also developed the negative stereotypes of the "Others". The most prominent of these is that of the Arab, frequently designed and presented as a comic figure. The "roles" of the Arab image in Israeli theatre reveal a combination of the comic with the frightening, in their depiction as a rival. This article offers explanations derived from theories of comedy and of the comic, and a description of the historical background to the comic roles of the Arab during the 20th century. Such images of the Arab in Israeli theatre can be found from the 1970s on, in a process of transition from stereotyping to a representation tending toward normalization, clearly recognizable in a realistic presentation. This process continued until the mid-1980s. During this period the Israeli theatre, through the "distancing" aid of comic tools, critically examined the exploitation of the Arabs in the Israeli economy and the paradoxes inherent in imposing the Hebrew culture upon Israeli Arabs. However, from the 1990s on, following the intifadas, the extra-theatrical reality returned and heightened the combination of the humorous with the threatening in representations of the Arab image in the theatre. Nonetheless, in recent decades a greater sensitivity and criticism by part of the spectators is recognizable in regard to the comic-stereotypes representing the Arab image in the theatre, cinema and television.